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>> next a conversation on the trump administration's firing of the judge -- advocates general. hosted by the bar association. [inaudible conversations] >> okay, ladies and gentlemen, let's come to order. we will get our program started as soon as we have the attention of the room. very good. so my name is steven preston and

i am chair of the aba standing committee on s law national security. as many of you know the standing committee is the organized bar's leading forum for addressing issues at the intersection of law and national security. we do that through a variety of manners, variety of means. i recommend you check out our website on americanbar.org. one of the ways in which we address issues of the day is through our widely acclaimed podcast, national security law today which i commend to you. another way in which we address the issues of the day is through our lunch and speaker series of which this is the latest installment. so our topic today as i said earlier is the role of the judge

advocates general in providing legal advice to the military. so we look forward to a discussion of the issues raised byby the recent dismissal of the judge advocates general of the army in the air force. for that purpose, we are pleased to have with us a former colleague and old friend admiral jim mcpherson, he was appointed to senior civilian positions at dod in the first trump administration. john, of course, has had a distinguished career in national security and foreign relations. he previously served as legal

advise the other the national security counsel and then legal adviser for the department of state. that was during the administration of george w. bush. he's aad long-time partner of te law firm where he heads global law and policy group and with that, john, i will turn it over to you. >> thanks, steven, great to be back before theur committee. since steven didn't talk about his own law firm, i hope that you will all at least look at the decision that came out from judgeok leon yesterday. if you didn't see it, the defense of rule off law, please go read it. great to be back. i will just say a couple more words ofi admiral mcpherson, oe thing i learned of national security group everybody has held multiple interesting jobs which makeses national securityo interesting and jim is no exception.

i have known him for 241 years when he was the judge advocate general of the navy when i was first legal adviser of the legal counsel and legal adviser in the state department and worked closely together. he was just tremendous adviserel to me on the difficult issues of detention and guantanamo and military commissions, the one thing we didns not get them together which i still hope we will get is to get the law, the treaty through the senate. the topic that we are about to talk about, though, i want to give a shout-out to jim but all the jags, the heartfelt thanks. i could not have done either of my job as adviser and i was in the situation room on 49/11, my first calls were to the jags. i got intense training on the laws, the conventions and i cannot thank you all enough for

all the services, so heartfelt thanks to those people here and to those who are now serving. so, jim as you heard served as the judge advocate general of the navy from 24004 to 2016, retired after years from the navy, you may wonder why it's 27 years. he served 3 years in the army. before he went to college as an army military -- probably abouto the most political organization you could have split between red states and blue states. they will tell you something about mcpherson that he could get along with all of them.

but as you heard from stephen and this is really significant and sets the stage for today, like many military officers in the first trump administration for he answered the call from secretary of defense mattis to come back in to the defense department and first as the general counsel of the army, then as the acting under secretary of the army and then as the acting secretary of the navy. i have joked to jim that he does not know whichve side of the ary navy game to sit on and he told me that he sits on both sides. so thank you, thank you for your service and that sets the stage for what we are going to talk about today. this is actually a discussion that jim and i had at the council in foreign relations shortly after secretary of defense hegseth dismissed both the air force and the army tjags

saying they were ill-suited for their jobs and that he wanted lawyers who would not challenge the instructions of the commander in chief. we had a good discussion then, stephen preston thought it's worth repleasing here today. jim, of course, i will end with most important part which is he is our former chairman of our committee, soda welcome back and the floor is yours. >> thank you, john, and thank you steven for asking me to do this, it's privilege and pleasure and thank you, john, for the kind introduction. hehe called me. he's the senior fellow for international law. i was happy to do that. the reviews for that came out

and so john andat i have decided to take the show on the road. this isin our first stop, so anybody out there want to book us, please feel free. but thank you to holley mcmahon. she makes it look easy, it is not. i assure you, thank you, holley for puttingma this on today. [applause] >> so i'm an age where i can become ameritus, one privilege is notes that they get to refer to in any discussion that they engage in. i will use notes and i hope that's okay. we have to clear up an administrative matter and that's article 4848 of the uniform code of military justice. i know many of you in here are familiar with a that, that's the section that makes it punitive if i say anything contemptuous about our current secretary of

defense, our president and whole line intel list of individuals, a retired officer i am subject to the ucmj, you don't really get retired pay but it's called retainer pay and i can be recalled standing by court marshal violating 4848. when i spoke of cfr it was off the record, no media present and not for attribution, very different from today. the media is here, thank you for covering us and thank you for all you do to keep our democracy vibrant. the tape will be posted on the website. so a couple of things, number one, if you think you heard that i used contemptuous words concerning our current secretary of defense, you are wrong, you didn't hear me correctly. if you think you heard me correctly, i misspoke. if you think i didn't misspeak, i did not have the specific

intent to use contemptuous words and if the court is to rule that that didnt not require specific intent but general intent i was suffering from a mental disease or defect. thank god. the second administrative is i see a lot of familiar faces, familiar face that is used to wear the uniform of jag. many of you in here know more than i do about the subject. i simply ask that you be gentle, thank you very much. let's roll. who are the jags and really how many are there? so the answer to who are the jags isw kind of easy, jags are licensed attorneys who are wearing the uniform of one of our six services. we also have by the way, a

reserve jags who wear reserve uniforms. every one of the six services has reserves. and by the way we have national guard jags, they are in the army, air force and they also wear the uniform and they also practice law in the military as a jag now and then. we also have support staff, civilian support staff and uniform support staff but generally the administrative things of jag administrations and paralegals and other things. by the way, we have civilian attorneys in every one of the service jag organizations that are employed by the jag that answered to the jag. they generally do the business law stuff. in the navy they would do claims and they would do contracts now and then. so it's important to remember and we will get to the distinction betweenal civilian attorney and uniform attorney working in the services. so painted picture there's

paint, there's way too many of them. i don't want to bore everybody with statistics but it's interest to know the numbers. understand that the numbers of active duty jags change on a monthly basis. i don't include the national guard or reserve jags in the numbers because those numbers change minute by minute, so the army has 1850 jags, what is that? quick sideline. for every year, the congress tells the services how many people they can have in active duty on 30 september, that's an important date. they can above that number but on 30 september, end of fiscal year, you have to have this number. needless to say people in human

relations and personnel are scrambling to get that initial usually down to the right number. recently they've not had problems with that because of retention issues, but end important date. >> navy has about just over a thousand. air force which includes the space forcerm has 1300 and thats about o .4. marine has 595. that's 3% of strength and coast guard which is the sixth uniform service that has jags 257. .5%. what does that mean, we have a little over 5,000 active duty jags in the services. now, that's .4% of the total active duty service members at any one time. i wonder what that -- what the relationship of that was to attorneys at large in our

country and what i discovered was that compared to the population of 18 and above, there are about .4% attorneys, a lot less than what i thought. but as you can see, the statistics there, the percentage is right on the target for the uniform services as well. so in addition to the uniform jags every one -- the 34 three departments have general counsel. i served for about a year or so. there are civilian attorneys who work for the general counsel, presidential nomination senate confirmed and they journally characterized as business attorneys of the three departments and portfolios would include acquisitions, logistics, installation, administrative

law. sometimes that friction is on the increase, sometimes it's on the decrease. i was very fortunate when i was the navy jag, mr. alberto mora, many in here know and the committee knows very well, he was the general counsel of the navy and my first day on the as the jag of the navy i paid a courtesy call m on mr. mora. jim, i view us as partners in the navy law firm and i appreciated that very much. now, i. obviously knew he was te senior partner but i appreciated the sentiment that went along with that. he -- he included me in decisions he made. he included me in issues that were raised and he a included me in his major effort which was regarding detaining treatment in gitmo and as most of you know in 24006 he received the jf kennedy profiles encourage award for actually bringing to light the treatment of detainees down in guantanamo.. so, howr do you become a jag?

there are three ways, most of the services recruit their jags in their student program. that is they recruit people in their first and second and sometimes their third year of law school. they join the service in reserve status and they are not in active duty. in the summer time they can go on active duty and do internships and those sorts of things but that's the majority of the new jags coming to the student program, graduate from law school, pass bar exam and come to active duty. they also do direct commission. direct commission is where an attorney who is already practicing volunteers comes and comes on active duty. those are rare and they usually use those to fill an end strength. and the finalss ways, a little t of a secret and i'm sure the secret gets out that the current administration may put an end to it,ie law education program. lep, i think we have one or two lep's here. they apply for the three

services and the marine services have lep programs, highly competitive, thousands of volunteers believe it or not. if you are selected, navy selects five, six or seven a year. you remain on active duty getting paid benefits and continue to receive promotions based upon your longevity and when you graduate from law school and pass the bar you come into the jag corps debt free. competition to get in the jag corps the competition has to be fairly strong, between 85 and 2015 the competition was very strong. that competition has fallen c of of it only because of issues recruiting. covid every one of the services to take a pause and bringing people in active duty and that

is still being felt. so what are the practice areas, what is it that a jag does? in their first few years most jags do military justice, court marshal work. they are litigating, prosecuting and defending service members before court marshal. again in most of the services they'll do that for three to five years and once they've completed that, they will never see a courtroom again. that's an exception is that we have jags that do appellate work, appeal market conviction and the appellate jags actually handle that. but you will do heavy military justice for the first three years of the career and specialize in what you want to do. jags also do legal assistance, assisting service members who have problems with the community legals wise, landlord-tenant relationships, car in behind payments, any number of things they can can seek legal assistance from the jags. most have extended legal

assistance, and what that is, civilian attorney licensed to practice in the state theyy are sitting working for the jag actually represents the service member at certain civil matters. mostly landlord-tenant disputes. contract law.ut here is one of the distinctions between the services. the navy and the marine corps does not do contract law. the army and air force do contract law and acquisitions. that's a big departure. there's a large number of army jag who is do contractor and acquisitions. for some who didn't do well in contracts -- generally that's specific of conflict, international law, cyber law, intelligence and what is called information operations.

so mid grade to senior jags that are doing national security law are usually located with the combatant commander or operational commander or headquarters, rules of engagement or national security law. there are a couple of unique practice areas in the maritime services, the navy and coast guard they do law of the sea, john mentioned law of the sea treaty. i can remember going to the hill and advocating for law of the sea 2005 and the major block, the rumor going around that the neighbors would have to paint holes blue. that's not true. curious that the law of the sea has never beenw ratified by ths country. also, maritime law and admiralty which is an interesting practice area that thehe navy gets invold in. so a couple of important distinctions with regard to the marine corps and the coast guard. so judge advocates in the marine

corps and coast guard, first of all, they're not an accord, they are called judge advocates. there's no jag corps in the coast guard. there's no jag corps. back to the marines and the coast guard, they are line officers first. they are regarded as line officer who is happened to be lawyers and what that means is that they will do a tour of duty or two, an assignment or two as a jag or judge advocate and then do line assignment as a line officer for the marines that fits very well because one of the mottos is every marine rifleman, a marine judge advocate in law school during one of their summers will go to ten weeks school at guantanamo upon graduation from law school and passing the bar will go to justice school in new port, rhode island and basic course

six months where they qualify as infantry officer. most of the time when they do what's called disaassociated tour, not doing advocate tour they are doing administrative tour.s that's not always the case. i had colleagues in the marine, who was marshal in camp and the other guantanamo. line officer tour of duty as judge advocate. the same thing for the coast guard. the best example right now is the current coast guard acting admiral kevin, committee knows very well. the other organizational difference and is very important the army and the air force and the marine corps and the coast guard jags work for their chief

of staff. in other words, the tjag of the army, the tjag of the air force they answer to chief of staff. they are reporting seniors chief of staff and department of army and department of the air force. in the navy the jag work for the secretary to have navy. the jags and the navy are assign assigned to secretary not chief of staff. why is that? well, since 1947 department of war and department of navy. when the national act took place that created dod and department of war went away there were several anomalies that maybe brought them with dod and that was one of them where navy jag works for the secretary to have navy. i had the privilegege of working for secretary gordon england, a true gentleman. i had to tell a quick war story.

one day huge issue, commissions are a huge issue, wrestling with those almost daily. one day i'm inla the secretary d he hearsor me out there, save, jim, yes, sir, mr. secretary, i was at the white house and fairly high-ranking person said to me you need to get control of your jag and he said, i don't know what you'ree doing, but don't stop. [laughter] >> as i said, i enjoyed working for gordon a whole lot. so why are have the jags become the center of attention? it was w the friday night massacre. that evening after normal working hours the president fired cq brown, he had been the chairman since 2023. nominated by president biden. less, than about hour later, secretary of defense who had been in the job less than a

month, he put out a memo. he firedff the cno, the first female cnoos of the navy and he fired the vice chief of the air force general and he put out a memo saying i'm calling for nominations to the position of senior leader to have army, navy and air force jag corps. in other words,of the tjags, if you will. tjag is not a term that the navy uses but i will use because it's easy to say and we all understand what it means. but there was an exception with regard to the navy and that this was the exception was this, the judge advocate of the navy french, he took office in the summer 2024. after the election chris french. since the president had extended

the pardon to him, he felt he would be at risk if he remained in active duty for retribution and he took the very difficult step of resigning as the jag and retiring in december of 2024 which meant that the department reynolds became the acting jag. when the secretary asked for nominations for all the three services, obviously the two sitting jags of the army lieutenant general joe burger who had six months in the job and lieutenant general charles plummer who had two and a half years in the job at the air force, they were essentially fired. but lea reynolds was not, she remained as, the acting jag at the time that this action was taken the navy had already put together a board that was going to select another jag. that obviously went away and we will talk about that in a few minutes. so what were the reasons that they give for his action and essentially firing the three

service jags? on the 25 of february he gave an interview on fox news and here is a surprise. ultimately we want lawyers that give sound constitutional advice and don't exist to attempt to be road blocks to anything, anything that happens in their spots.a what we know about those jags, they're calls tjags inside the military, traditionally they've been elected by each other or chosen by each other which is exactlyy how it works, often wih the chairman as well. small groups who perpetuate the status quo, time for fresh blood, closed quote. he was asked the question why did you fire the service jags and here is what he responded to that. the current tjags were not well suited to provide

recommendations when ordersal we given. despite a lot of opportunities since then, he's failed to point to any evidence that would support the notion that the tjags somehow failed in their duties or in their responsibilities. and with regard to senior officers, chairman and cno and vice chief of staff, here is what he had to say. the president has right and duty to have officers hi has trust and confidence in. that's true, he does. there's a little bit of historical

professional military officers. they're not politicians. they have no political, political leanings, if you will. i'm not sure i convinced him. that same sentiment is obviously held by the current administration, but this is the first administration that actually took action based upon that misperception and actually is firing senior officers, because they were promoted to those positions by the previous administration. i want for just a second to try and dissect what the secretary meant in those statements. first of all, his mindset. i listened to his testimony before the senate armed services committee when he was testifying at his nomination, and he used

the term "jagoffs." i'm sure some of you have heard that bantered about. it's offensive. it's a crude reference. i think we can all conjure up what it probably means, but in response to senator reid pressing him, senator reid said, "you use the term jagoff. what does that mean?" and you can see him become visibly embarrassed, and he pauses and he halts, and then he says, "oh, i think we all know what that means, senator." and senator reid responded, "no, some of my colleagues may not know what that means. please tell us what you meant by that term." and here's what he said. "they are officers who place their own career, their medals, their status abound sound advice to the warfighter." i would say he collected himself fairly quickly, because the term "jagoff" is a disgustingly crude

term. i first heard it when i was on active duty as a young lieutenant. it was offensive then. it's offensive now. and to hear your secretary call you a "jagoff," i cannot imagine a greater morale buster than that. the secretary has written 6 books. the most recent was called "the war on warriors." every one of his books is critical of the rule of law in regard to operational settings. his most recent book, as i said, "war and warriors," was published in 2024, just last year, and here's what he said about lawyers. i'm quoting from his book. "modern fighters face lawyers as much as enemies." let me say that again. "modern fighters face lawyers as much as enemies. our adversaries should receive bullets, not lawyers. if we refuse to do what is necessary, that is precisely why wars become endless." and here's what he wrote in that book about the geneva conventions. "we are just fighting with one hand behind our back, and the enemy knows it. if our warriors are forced to follow rules arbitrarily and asked to sacrifice more lives so that international tribunals feel better about themselves,

aren't we just better off winning our wars according to our own rules? who cares what other countries think?" as a fox commentator, which is the job he had before he became the secretary, he was keen on three different court martial cases that were currently in the media then, in the media because he put them in the media. he frequently had family members of the accused on his shows, wives, parents, friends who talked about how their loved one was railroaded by the system and the system was controlled by the jags. personal lieutenant who was convicted in 24012 of war crime related offenses. service of 19 years. goldstein, murder of afghan farmer. he never got court marshaled. in 2019 he was charged with

related offenses. not the navy jag corps. convicted onn pretty minor offense. the issue for chief gallagher, the device for seal. secretary of the navy at the time richard spencer felt that he should keep stripe, he was able to keep the stripe and secretary spencer was fired. in each of those cases, our current secretary as a fox commentator blames the jags for railroading those individuals who weres simply doing the job with the selection of new tjag, they are chosen by each other, there's a statutory requirement for selecting a tjag.

they shall ensure that the officer selected is recommended by a board of officers that insofar as practicable subject to procedures and applicable selection of boards governing promotion of officers. the procedures to select jags for promotion from their entry level as second lieutenant up through colonel or captain is by a board of officers that are composed of jags with one representative from the line. those boards follow a precept that is signed off by the service secretary and they look records and they recommend for promotion the best and fully capable is how the words that are used. so up to captain colonel, yes, recommendation for promotions made by other jags, but recommendation for promotion to the tjag is by a separate board it's a board made up of line officer admirals or generals.

usuallythe tjag him or herself sits on the board and select their relief. i selected my relief but interesting to sit on the board with senior officers and look at records and look at what they thought were important in those records. what i learned is that they paid closest attention and gave greatest credibility to those performance evaluations of thosi jags written by another blind officer. the performance evaluation that is a jag made for another jag that was regarded as important but most important records before those boards were the performance of valuations that were written by a line officer, so it was line officers that selected for recommendation. the tjag it wasn't their insular friends that the secretary thought that's how they were selected. what about the chairman and joint chief of staff, if you remember in the quote, he painted the broad brush, by the way, that's how the chairman is selected too. i'm appalled that he didn't know

how the chairman was selected. the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, everyone one of the services recommend someone to the secretary of defense. the secretary of defense then interviews and forwards recommendation of the white house and the president interviews and makes the selection for general milley it was general milley and one other four-star general that was interviewed by then president trump in his first administration who then selected general milley. he wasn't selected by a board and buddies. i'm just surprised that the secretary even said that. so what about theth role of a tg because that's where the meet of this goes, the criticism that the secretary had regarding rules of engagement that the tjags were involved in. well, quick background. rules of engagement start with document called rules of engagement drafted by joints

chief ofit staff, reviewed and approved by secretary of defense. there are provision that is provide modifications. jag is the adviser, jags advise, commanders decides. jags inform the commanders' decisions. i hesitate to say this because i don't want to misspeak but i want everybody to understand. as the judge advocate general of thee navy i had no rule whatsoever in rules of engagement, none. and i say that tjags in the other services have no role in drafting or promulgating rules of engagement. their rule is there. there's a department, what do departments e do? departments do recruit, train

and equip. departments do not do operations. they don't do drafting of promulgation. what they do is ensure that jags are going to do that job are trained and.o appropriatel assigned. to criticize the tjags is misplaced, again, it's misinformed. so why is this important to the national security committee and to this committee? why are the jags vital to our ournational security? first of all, the primary role to the tjags, they represent and ensure the rule of law and operational environments.

adherence to the rule of law is essential as discipline force. they're not road blocks. let me quote here just really quickly. from a retired four star who was combatant commander actually sent for three years two years as another combatant commander. here is what he had to say. based on my experience during my time as combatant commander i had well developed appreciation for role of legal advisers played for operational activities, my jag was integrated to all planning and execution aspects of our operations. the advice i received was essential as we solidified guidance and made modifications to eoe. i do not recall even a single situation when i considered the

advice of -- how we do things are as important as the things that we are doing. i never felt that operational law and commander limited operational choices, very different from the perspective and opinion held by our secretary of defense. so where are we now? so where are we in the procedure to forward those nominations as the secretary asked for in february? my understanding is, i don't have firsthand knowledge, obviously but i've talked to people who are in fairly well position to have firsthand understanding is each of the 34 services has already held a board but the guidance to that board was very different than previous boards. the guidance toe the boards was rank order your recommendations,

in other words, don't come forward with a single name recommendation, rank order them. one, two, three, four, five, however far down you want to go in rank order. and then forward that rank order to the service secretary. the service secretary then has interviewed one two or top three. i don't know if decisions have been made or not but the procedure was that the secretary within forward -- secretary of service put forward one name to the secretary of defense who wouldwo also interview and forwd name to the white house for nomination. as you can see this departs markedly from the statutory requirement that the boards of selected tjags, all other boards as far as practicable. now, the sect ray of the navy is brand new.

no military background. as a matter of fact, he was a money manager, quite successful doing that. and he had -- he had gotten nomination and was confirmed by the senate and came over to the building and short time later couple of weeks he was interviewing top three individuals that the navy board forwarded to him and among the questions that i'm told he was asked was the following, do you agree with the policy regarding the mandatory inoculation for covid and how the policy was executed? you remember that the policy was if you refused to be inoculated you were discharged. the second question he asked, do you agree with former policy eligibility of transgender people who enter and remain in the service and the policies was executed, he was referring to biden policy who refers to previous trump policy and removed most of the prohibitions for transgender individuals too

serve in the military. two highly political questions both of which tjag would have never been involved in and in my opinion, totally inappropriate questions to ask for the tjag. very few questions about leadership, your experience, what is your opinion regarding rules of engagement, those questions that the secretary should be asking p for the persn that ishi going to be his or her jag. so what's going on right now? there are a number of individuals, a number of organizations who are urging the senate armed services committee to hold t hearings for the nominations of the jags. that's never been done in the past. we have never had hearings for the individuals that have been nominated for the tjag position. typically what happens is the nominee will go over to the hill and will pay courtesy calls upon the chairman of the ranking member and whoever else, whatever senator or their staff wants to interview the individual, that's how i did it. i interviewed with senator mccain and senator reed.

they were both pleasant, pleasant experiences. and that's how it's always been done. the senate is now being urge today hold hearings. why should they hold hearings? a couple of reasons, one to get to the bottom of how the selection process occurred and why was it practicable to be done, they will adhere to the rule of law, that if they are being asked to do something that they believe is unlawful or unconstitutional that they will refuse to do it. i think it's important to get that commitment from the nominee and we are not going to get the commitment unless they are on the record testifying before the senate armed services committee. so that's where the game plan is at this juncture. no decision has been made yet. some indication the sas will not do that and i hope and pray they will. so question and answer time. and please don't feel like you

have to limit your questions to my presentation as johnat said i spent some time as general counsel of the army and undersecretary and two months of the acting secretary of the navy so ask away, john. >> two questions and that will give us ten' minutes so please put your questions together. you improved with age. soor one, i think you made prety clear including the quote from unnamed senior officer that secretary of defense's views of jags is not representative at least of the officers who you dealt with. so i'm going to ask you a difficult question which you can punt, but where is this coming from? is this a junior officer level versus senior officer level? is this just more of the division of our country between sort of red states and blue

states that have view of lawyer and judge advocate generals, all of us, everybody in this room, the state department, you know, is the old let's give it to the lawyers and they'll kill it but at the same time, you know, i knew that secretary rice had tremendous trust in what we would tell her even if sometimes it slowed things down. so where is this view coming from and i take it you think it's not representative of the views of the senior officers who rely on legal advice every day? >> you hit it on the head on the first suggestion. the secretary was a major in national guard. that was his background. he did do a tour in iraq, and i will give him that and it's my experience through the years that it was generally junior officers thatt blamed lawyers r not being able to do something. often what youul would hear the senior leaders who made the decision blaming lawyer that is we can't do that and what you find it really is kirk of junior

officers that don't understand the role of jags and quickly blame the jags for what's going on. ile was unfortunate during my career. i worked for a lot of flight officers an without exception they were -- they were exceptional leaders, gentlemen, but i remember the first one i worked for, i worked for a three-star. he was commander of all naval air forces in the atlantic and i paid my courtesy call upon him. i was pretty junior. paid courtesy call, to his staff and i will never forget what he said, he said, remember as a jag, you are the constitution conscious of the a command you work for. and i've always appreciated that. i wish i would have had a plaque that saida. that, you were r the constitution conscious of the command you work for and i think

that's the opinion of our senior leadership. i think theyan truly believe tht as the general that i quoted from. >> happy to hear it. second question, a couple of things that you didn't mention and over to ask a few. unfortunately this is part of it, the war on the jags but as i understand it, there is an effort from i guess from the secretary himself to engage in sort of retraining or untraining and so i understand that he's appointed his personal attorney, commissioned him as a commander in the jag corps. >> navy corps. >> assigned personal staff to oversee a review that state of education in the military and then second, jeff cornyn was recently, expressing concern we will stop doing training really for the ranking files, for the first time in who knows how many decades we will stop training

people. i'm just curious what you're hearing aboutut those two thing. >> i'm hearing that precisely and the person that he appointed to the jag corps and naval reserve is palator who was gallagher's counsel, one of the cases i mentioned and that's how hehe developed a friendship/relationship with the secretary. f understanding is the army is rolling back mandatory training and junior listed individuals on the law of war and rules of engagement and they are also planning -- whenever they have an exercise, requirement was that a law of war portion always be written into the exercise whether it'd be with prisoners of war, rules of engagement, my understanding is they are rolling that as well. >> what do you think the impact? is that kind of education wasted

on 18, 19, 20-year-olds? >> it introduces them that there are rules in what we do but it also reinforces to them that their leadership feels that this is important otherwise why would they be spending the time and resources to train me on this. this is something that i need to know. i think it's important junior officers with that -- with the basic notion of the law of war. >> good, thank you. the floor is open. >> be gentle. >> questions? please identify yourself, if you would. [inaudible] >> made the jag corps to professional and such reliable source of the rule of law --

clarify, iss the corps themselvs being subject to -- are they -- [inaudible] >> i'm not hearing that. i'm not seeing that, but result of a tjag selection is that there are a number of colonels that are inio active duty waitig to see what the next selection is because it might be me. and if i'm not selected, then i retire. so i think what you're going to see a lot of premature retirements, joe burger, army, he had only been in the job six months or so, and so now that they selected another one he was going to have a three-year tour of duty, i think you will see senior colonels, clearly i'm

never going to be select today the tjag and i'm retiring. i think you will see the same with the other services. i think you will see a little bit of the flight to the door by some of the senior officers but i don't think that was intended orue unintended consequence buti think that's going to be one of the consequences. we have a secretary that calls us jagoffs. it's useless, why should we do that? i think it's a tremendous morale buster. [inaudible] >> thanks for the great description of the coast guard, the coast guard jag corps. just last week it was announced that the secretary had decided

to tear up report from last summer which is people selected last year -- [inaudible] >> get a new -- also i don't know why. >> thank you fort that update. by the way, you could speak disparagingly or you could contemptuous words concerning the secretary of homeland security because article 88 says department of transportation. [laughter] >> now the coast guard transfer transferred to homeland in --

>> questions? [inaudible] >> i'm wondering there was a question about jag corps, if in fact, attack -- i'm wondering to minimize the role or responsibilities of jags which then reduce our requirements in potential staffing? >> i think that's one of the threats. senior jags are telling junior officers just hang in there, just hang in there. things change. this administration will changeh and the pendulum will go back. seniors are having tough time staying with an organization

that regards them so poorly. >> yeah. >> thank you, marine judge advocate. how do you see this ending? >> wow. great question.ou [laughter] >> great question. you know, i don't know. you read the paper this morning, you -- you may conclude that our current secretary iss on thin ie because he can't quite get front office on the front page. if he were to depart, who would take his place? would that be in change of direction? probably not. i think what you're going to see a period of upheaval in the jag corps particularly in the area of training, rules of engagement because the current administration doesn't think they're that important. >> so that's a good tee up to my sorto of last question and invitation to you, jim, so when i'm over at the state department i spent talking to other

countries and number of jags, despiteth shortcomings and despe that we fall off our pedestal and other countries look to the united states particularly for laws of war,d the international and humanitarian law, one of my disappointments that we have not been able to move forward on a number of initiatives, people to lead in the area but other countries look to us to do this. so i guess, jim, i know that you're not circulating quite as much but you also hear a lot from people. what, one, what do you think is the going to the impact when other countries see that our secretary of defense is -- is downplaying the importance of compliance with law in our military and, two, if you had a few minutes with a successor

secretary of defense as a former tjag, what would you say as to what that person ought to do to change things? >> so when i was the navy jag, every year command would hold legal conference and the year i went i was in singapore and they invited the jags, all the jags in the pacific region to attend and most of them did so it was a large gathering, not only allies but not -- well, the adversaries, peoplese' republicf china sent delegation, north korea did not. but it was a gathering of a lot of senior jags, some of them they're on tjags and we had a dinner that was hosted by pacific command and i remember that dinner. one of the jags and one of our

allied nations actually it was australia, he said how much he publicly -- lick a toast, how much he appreciated what the united states was doing, the navy particularly with regard to rules of engagement and law of war and how they borrowed from our publications for their own rules and how muchy they appreciated that our military took the lead in law of war and rules of engagement and really resonated with mena and made me realize that, yeah, we really are the leaders in this area. we are no longer the leaders of this area. and for now who is and how can our allies trust us when it comes to joint a those sorts of things and when they see joint exercise take place and all the rule of law, rules of engagement, exercises are taken out. i think that sends a terrible message. what would i say to the new

secretary of defense? gosh, i would say this, i would give him a decision matrix bottle and i would say to him, you know before you make any decision there are three questions that you need to ask yourself. first questionti is, is this ethical, does the decision i'm about to make shoot the norms of my organization and the second decision is it lawful, is it a lawful decision and third perhaps more importantly is it moral, is it the right thing to do. i stole that from a four-star general, but i think it is so true and that would be the advice i would give to the new secretary. >> jim, thank you, that was thar leadership.

[applause] >> keep it up. don't stop. [inaudible conversations] >> thank you for coming and thank you once again. thank you. [inaudible conversations]